The shows on your R10 are tied to that specific unit, so if you were to move the drives to a new unit, even assuming the drives were good, you could not watch them on another unit.

If you have another R10, then you can use that unit to troubleshoot the existing unit. For example, you could see if the drives from another unit boot in your bad R10 (again, you won't be able to watch shows, but you can boot). If the other drives work, then you know the problem with your R10 is not drive-related.

Jeff,

My R10 tries to boot up, but then can't get past the screen that says "Just a few minutes more..." I thought boot up problems are always the hard drive. Is this not true?

If it is the hard drive, do you think that a data recovery company could recover the data, transfer it to a new working hard drive, and put it back into the same R10? I realize that would be expensive, but do you think it would work??

If it's not the hard drive, is there any way to transfer the data to a new hard drive, fix the R10, then place the hard drive back in the R10?

Certainly I'm not the first person in recorded history that this has happened to. Why isn't repairing the broken hard drive or transferring the data to a new hard drive while preserving the video files on it a commonly offered service?

Yes, you are right: Being stuck on Almost there is most often a drive issue. But not always, and because you have more than one of the same unit, you could easily determine that with some self-help/troubleshooting.

It is impossible for me to say how successful data recovery would be. We typically do not recommend data recovery, except to customers who have 'once in a lifetime' content on their TiVo (eg. "my son was on the local news!"). We have more success when a drive is stuck on the "green screen" than we do when drives are stuck on powering up or Almost there.

No, you're not the first person who has lost data on a TiVo, and I recognize that losing data is frustrating.

In fact, there are data recovery service who charge $5,000+ to save data, but when we're talking about TV, most people aren't willing to pay that kind of money, and we don't think that our resources are best spent offering that type of service. With TiVos, however, saving data is really not like saving files from a PC. It is more difficult and typically is an 'all or nothing' approach. You either get it all, or you get nothing.

Hmmm..interesting. Thanks for the reply.

But say I did want to pay through the nose for data recovery and say they were able to recover some or all of it. Do you think that the data could be transferred to a new working hard drive, and put it back into the same R10? I realize that would be expensive, but do you think it would work??

If it's not the hard drive, is there any way to transfer the data to a new hard drive, fix the R10, then place the hard drive back in the R10?

I don't know enough about the inner workings of the R10, but maybe you might know the answer to these questions?

The short answer to your question is, "yes." Give us a ring and we can discuss the particulars of your situation.

Well Stellar Phoenix Digital Media, recover Digital Photo / Images / Pictures / Audio / Video files from all external storage devices such as Camera cards, USB devices like pen drives etc.

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Hope it will help.